Why hire Martin?
- Professionally trained.
- Competitive rates.
- More about my credentials.
- I also provide editing services.
Indexes completed
Robertson, Ed. Solving the Enterprise Risk Management Puzzle: Secrets to Successful Implementation.
Deveau, M. and Panitch, V. Exploitation: From Practice to Theory.
Vujosevic, Tijana. Modernism and the Making of the Soviet New Man.
McInnes, Craig. The Mighty Hughes: From Prairie Lawyer to Western Canada’s Moral Compass.
Raby-Dunne, Susan. Morrison: The Long-Lost Memoir of Canada’s Artillery Commander in the Great War.
Shaw, Rob, and Richard Zussman. A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for BC.
Varner, Collin. Flora and Fauna of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.
Russ, Lisa Jean. Last Flight to Stuttgart: Searching for the Bomber Boys of Lancaster EQ-P.
MacLeod, Alan Livingstone. From Rinks to Regiments: Hockey Hall-of-Famers and the Great War.
Robertson Ed. Strategic Planning: Process, Templates, and Link to Successful Operations.
Andrews, D. Larraine. Ranching under the Arch: Stories from the Southern Alberta Rangelands.
Wichtel, Diana. Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father.
Ferguson, Ian. The Survival Guide to British Columbia.
Shoroplova, Nina. A Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
Mather, Ken. Stagecoach North: A History of Barnard’s Express.
Kennedy, J. M. Crown Isle: The First 25 Years
Paltin, Judith. Modernism and the Idea of the Crowd.
Milman, Isa. Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History, and Home.
Hayter-Menzies, Grant. Muggins: The Life and Afterlife of a Canadian Canine War Hero.
Taylor, Eric B. Rivers Run Through Us: A Natural and Human History of Rivers of North America.
Ogilvie, Keith C. Failed To Return: Canada’s Bomber Command Sacrifice in the Second World War.
Rollings-Magnusson, Sandra. Tales from the Homestead: A History of Prairie Pioneers, 1867-1914.
Bryan, Liz. Pioneer Churches of Vancouver Island and the Salish Sea.
Pearkes, Eileen Delahanty. The Geography of Memory.
Berton, Paul. Shopomania.
Dunning, Norma. Kinauvit? What’s Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter’s Search for Her Grandmother.
Allan, Robert G. Workboats for the World: The Robert Allan Story.
Redl, Carolyn Four Seasons by the Salish Sea.
Jones, David Laurence New World Dreams.
What makes a good index?
The American Society for Indexing publishes a handy Indexing Evaluation Checklist.
Can the computer do it?
Computer-produced indexes are mediocre at best. They are suited to open-ended systems (where material is constantly added). A satisfactory back-of-the-book or embedded index demands a human indexer. Even alphabetizing is not so simple—as the Chicago Manual shows here.
Can I write my own?
Of course! However,
- The UK’s Society of Indexers suggests this is “usually a bad idea.”
- In his bestseller, The Well-Fed Self-Publisher, author Peter Bowerman has this to say:
“Do what I did and hire it out. On my first book, I tried to create it myself, using the indexing function in Microsoft Word. Mistake. For two reasons. For starters, it took me forever to do it, and spawned countless homicidal moments. And, adding serious insult to injury, once I turned the manuscript over to my typesetter, given the different operating platform and repagination, my index was worthless, and he had to create a new one. Great. So, for this book, I found a professional indexer.”
- Indexing is a skilled task. Even if you do have the skills, you may be too close to the material to write the index your book deserves. Nancy Mulvany, sometime president of the American Society for Indexing, wrote the classic, Indexing Books.
Guess who wrote the index? (Hint: It wasn’t Mulvany.)
If you do decide to write it yourself, here are a few good starting points.
Does my book really need an index, anyway?
No.
Not unless you—or your readers—care about quality. Here’s what the American Society for Indexing has to say: Why Your Book Needs an Index. The (UK) Society of Indexers explains why, in Search vs Index.
And the New Hart’s Rules puts it this way:
“Although at first glance free-text searching in digital products might seem to make indexes redundant, the chief disadvantages are that users must know precisely what they are looking for, and how to spell it; that multiple hits may be generated with no indication of which are of greatest relevance; and that underlying concepts which do not have obvious key terms are not retrieved. A well-formed index is therefore just as important in digital as in print publications.”
Martin Gavin uses SKY Index™ (Professional Edition).